Twitter announced users can now tip their selected content creators with bitcoin. The announcement was made by Esther Crawford, product lead for creator monetization at Twitter. She told reporters at a media briefing that the leading micro-blogging platform wanted to “continue to incentivize the types of conversations that people want to see.”

This feature was rolled out in May only as a test. This was designed to hash out how it would work for creators to earn from their content with cryptocurrency. The Tips feature is now fully adopted and will be available to iOS in the 3^rd week of September. Android users will be able to use the bitcoin-powered feature in the following weeks.

Strike, the bitcoin lighting wallet, is the one Twitter is integrating onto its platform to allow uses to receive the payments. Addresses will also be linked to the bitcoin information for sending and receiving digital money under these transactions.

Content creators using cryptocurrency will not be charged any fees for those operating through the Tips feature.

“Bitcoin isn’t the extent of Twitter’s crypto plans: the company said it is also planning to support authentication for NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, by letting people connect their crypto wallets” Alex Heath writes in The Verge.

Twitter is Pro Crypto

It came as no surprise that this move was to be made by Twitter, with CEO Jack Dorsey being a staunch proponent of cryptocurrency. He had recently announced that he was having a go at bitcoin mining and even believes in the ‘world peace’ forging capacity of the currency.

In addition to this, the site also announced with was working on another attribute that would enable users to verify and display their NFT digital assets. The move, the company says, is that it’s “another way to support creators who make digital art” according to CNBC.

Not everyone likes crypto

However, not everyone believes in the ‘power’ of cryptocurrency. Like in everything, there are always two sides to a story. Uteckie spoke to Rajka Stjepanovic, Chief Finance Officer of Youpal Group. Youpal is a start-up company based out of Stockholm, Sweden. Stjepanovic, who has decades-long experience in finance, believes cryptocurrency is but a smokescreen.

“I see that people believe they will earn a huge amount in a short time when they invest in cryptocurrency. I don’t believe in that. I think it’s basically showing people how to invest their money in the market and make it grow into returns. But the fluctuations in these currencies show that there is some manipulation. What happens is people follow the trends and invest when there are these sharp peaks… but then are disappointed when it swings the other way.”

Although many people have indeed earned more than a ‘quick buck’ from investing in cryptocurrency, with many fads such as Dogecoin aiding this process, Stjepanovic warns that there is no bullion supporting this type of currency: “Behind these currencies, there is no real value. There is nothing. For me, I am expecting a serious problem to arise as I don’t think it’s something sustainable in the long term.”

She points out to more problems that are likely to arise from the use of this type of currency in future: regulation, criminal activity and taxation are but a few.

But for now, the micro-bloggers on Twitter are supported if this is the currency of their choice. For any doomsday scenario, we will just have to wait and watch…